From: thug@phantom.com (Murdering Thug)
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 15:56:52 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Textual analysis
In-Reply-To: <199303022252.AA14712@ra.cs.umb.edu>
Message-ID: <m0nTghU-000jqOC@phantom.com>
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Tim May writes:

>Imagine what can be done with word and phrase frequency analysis, with
>examination of punctuation styles (e.g., some people use _this_ for
>emphasis while others use *this*), and so on. Entropy measures, etc.

I believe that such programs already exist. They are used to identify
unknown authors of famous documents.  I believe some of Shakespeare's
work was under close scrutiny a number of years ago, as were the
Fedaralist papers.

There was an article in Byte about three or four years ago all about
this kind of technology.

Thug